Self-Supported Tailoring of Nickel Sulfide/CuCo Nanosheets into Hierarchical Heterostructures for Boosting Urea Oxidation Reaction

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Abstract
Electro-oxidation of urea (UOR) in alkaline medium is one of the most effective alternative ways of producing green hydrogen, as the oxidation potential in UOR is less and thermodynamically more favorable than conventional water oxidation. The development of cost-effective materials in catalyzing UOR is recently seeking more attention in the research hotspot. Suitably modifying the Ni-based catalysts towards active site creation and preventing surface passivation is much important in this context, following which we reported the synthesis of Ni3S2 (NS) supported with CuCo (CC) bimetallic (NSCC). A simple hydrothermal route for NS synthesis and the electrodeposition method for CuCo (CC) deposition is adapted in a self-supported manner. The NS and CC catalysts exhibited sheet-like morphology, as confirmed by SEM and TEM analysis. The bimetallic CC deposition prevented the surface passivation of nickel sulfide (NS) over oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and improved the charge-transfer kinetics. The NSCC catalyst catalyzed UOR in an alkaline medium, which required a lower potential of 1.335 V vs. RHE to attain the current density of 10 mAcm−2, with a lower Tafel slope value of 131 mVdec−1. In addition, a two-electrode cell setup is constructed with an operating cell voltage of 1.512 V for delivering 10 mAcm−2 current density. This study illustrates the new strategy of designing heterostructure catalysts for electrocatalytic UOR.
Funding Information
  • Royal Society—Newton International Fellowship Alumni (AL\211016, AL\221024, SRG/2023/000658, RS-2024-00441750)
  • SERB Start-Up Research Grant (AL\211016, AL\221024, SRG/2023/000658, RS-2024-00441750)
  • National Research Foundation of Korea (AL\211016, AL\221024, SRG/2023/000658, RS-2024-00441750)
  • Department of Chemistry at SRMIST (AL\211016, AL\221024, SRG/2023/000658, RS-2024-00441750)

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